Slashdot Mirror
Firefox Promo Videos
sebFlyte writes "Last week Mozilla Europe launched some extremely funny promotional videos for Firefox and ZDNet is reporting that they're spreading across the net like wildfire." From the article: "This is just the beginning -- I only posted it on my personal blog and it's already spreading nicely...We wanted to start small as we were concerned that servers wouldn't be able to handle the load."
"we were concerned that servers wouldn't be able to handle the load" -> Slashdotted already. :(
Slashdotted already, 15 seconds after first post!
licet differant, aequabitur
Wasn't porn the whole reason that people wanted a better web browser in the first place?
When I first glanced at this story I thought it said Firefox porno videos. Hot browser sex! IE and Foxy FF go on safari!
The days of the digital watch are numbered.
We wanted to start small as we were concerned that servers wouldn't be able to handle the load.
Welcome to slashdot. Now it's spreading like the fire inside the case of your webserver.
A lot of the older generation has no idea what ActiveX is, how harmful it can be... it would be swell to see Firefox maybe try to get the attention of more casual, not-so-savvy PC users.
...both interiorlly, and exteriorlly.
"We wanted to start small as we were concerned that servers wouldn't be able to handle the load."
I'm sure a post to Slashdot is going to help.
A treat to eat, in a puppet that's neat!
Mentioning "video" without the subsequent "torrent link" is asking for trouble.
404 - Funny not found
I couldn't get the videos to work in Firefox 1.0.4 (with Flashblock installed). I clicked on the Flashblock "play" button, but then got only audio, no video. I had to open the page in IE to see them. Oh the humanity.
-gary
They should offer eMule and BT links for easier sharing ...
You too? So I'm not the only person here with a filthy mind. :-)
Stick Men
What would have been better was him screaming like that, and then he goes to the woman in the ad "nasty pop-up..." and then the screen flashes "SHOULD HAVE USED FIREFOX", and point you to getfirefox.com.
That's the marketing angle I would like for firefox. Not that it's better through addition (which it is), but appeal to people because it's better through subtraction (less bullshit that IE lets through).
Berto
The adverts are certainly cool, I enjoyed watching them.
BUT, although they mention FireFox, they don't give much clue as to what it does, other than "it's something to do with computers".
I can't see this converting anyone.
Sure, there is a link to download FF at the end, but users these days really should be discouraged from downloading something just because "the advertiser says so". Aren't we working against that culture?
I really think the adverts need to make more noise about what firefox is and does.
Yeah... verrry funny. Poor guys are worried about load handling and you go ahead and slashdot them!!
I already got one "unable to connect" error.
poor fellas
Yeah... ok. So I guess a few kiddies might get a kick out of it.
Hokey statistics and ancient misconceptions are no match for a good thought in your head, kid!
This is screaming at the top of its lungs for a bittorrent
Want to see every step I took to start my company? http://www.rowdylabs.com/blogs/pitchtothegods
sorry - that sounded a bit harsh. I think it's great that people are trying to promote FF.
I just don't feel the "blank and mysterious" adverts of the dot-com-bubble era are the right way to do it.
See - this just goes to show: popularity is bad!
I always knew it was best to toil in obscurity!
air and light and time and space
Is it just me or does firefox seem to get promoted/mentioned by Slashdot everyday?
It's like eating your favorite food everyday, eventually you'll get sick of it.
http://funnyfox.org.nyud.net:8090/
Which loads fine for me, but the Flash animations just show "-21474..." or something in the middle of a black empty rectangle. I wonder if the .swf file is trying to request another resource on the funnyfox.org server? Instead of using a relative URL?
Dr Superlove 300ml. I use my powers for awesome
Yawn.
/Firefox user on PC; Safari on Mac
How the hell is something like this funny? Kinda creepy, I'd say.
http://j-walkblog.com/images/firefoxad.jpg
I watched these movies a few days back, and found them amusing, but I didn't understand their message. Are they suggesting that using e.g. IE is so devastating to the user that his head will pop off? Or is using Firefox so horrible that he scream in horror? Or are these good things, to show how remarkably different Firefox is from the competition?
Cute videos, but I have no idea what they're trying to communicate.
ShoutingMan.com
http://funnyfox.org.nyud.net:8090/
What a weird sense of humor Europ has. Only the second one was mildly good.
Firefox Porno? hmmm I think that might be illegal...
I have a screencap of the best part of the video:a m.jpg
http://www.collegechixors.com/images/firefox_scre
And after today, expect 500,000 today just from /. readers alone.
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
Okay, it's working now! It must have just taken some time to load.
Dr Superlove 300ml. I use my powers for awesome
-- Thou hast strayed far from the path of the Avatar.
http://mozilla.mirrors.tds.net/mozilla-video//port able1.swf
n e1.swf
e au1.swf
http://mozilla.mirrors.tds.net/mozilla-video//jeu
http://mozilla.mirrors.tds.net/mozilla-video//bur
I don't see the hype. They were vaguely amusing at best, certainly not the hilarity people are talking about. I suspect it's just the novelty of seeing a fairly polished video advert for an open-source project that is impressing people. Really, if they were promoting any other product, would people even bother talking about it?
unfortunately, that should have had a warning - my officemates were a bit taken aback by the yelling.
But The Mobile was quite funny.
Can't get The Network to work. I think they've been slashdotted.
[humorous rant] Darn you slashdot! Yet another cool idea suffers under the weight of worldwide geek traffic! When will it ever stop? [/rant]
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Damn, hit Submit instead of Preview. Should read "expect 500,000 hits just from /. readers alone."
It's all fun and games until someone loses the key to the handcuffs.
Interesting, I didn't even get them knowing what Firefox is. At best, they are lame. As this is only one person's opinion, take it with a grain of salt of course.
"Truth is not decided by majority vote" consensus gentium -- Norman Geisler
Honestly, couldn't a script be written relatively easily that would take an accepted story submission, download chosen media, automatically create a torrent, and replace the original link with the torrent link?
I find laziness to be an excellent motivator.
Overall, I was impressed. Technical slashdotters, please elaborate. Thanx.
It's too bad these videos are completely unfunny.
I have a website. It's about Macs.
n/t
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
FirefoXXX
The key to Firefox reaching the masses it to appeal to the lowest common denominators: sex and fear. You can sell it via fear, by touting better security (there's not a lot in the mainstream press to prove that to the average Joe, but...).
With sex, you could set Beyonce aka Foxy Cleopatra to do a commerical. Get it, "Foxy"? Maybe OG Pam "Foxy Brown" Grier?
Or maybe a sexy anthropomorphic cartoon lady fox? Eh? Maybe? A sexy cartoon lady fox would be better than the "non-anthropomorphic fox soul-kissing the earth" which is what the logo looks like now. (That comment just bough me a Score of -1)
they don't give much clue as to what it does
That's not neccesarily a bad thing. It's an old advertising trick to deliberately miss out some information in order to stimulate curiosity.
Admittedly, this could be leaving out too much.
I think what this might do it hurry those who do know what firefox is into getting round to trying it. I know I would if it made me eat telephones.
-- MartinG To mail me: echo kewyjlcxyzvjfxbqwh | tr bcefhjklqvwxyz
Coral Cache
Ahh yes...the things porn leads us to learn about computers....
- Mastering file/directory filesystems.
- Encryption
- Clearing recently used documents
- Splitting partitions (What's this K: drive, Jimmy?)
- Writing filename obfusactors (using a password as an encryption seed no-less!)
- Wiping all trails of browsing for a day, cookies, cache, history, etc..
- Keyboard shortcuts like Alt+Tab, Alt+Space, N, Win+D, Alt+F4.
- Tabbed browsing, sweet sweet tabbed browsing.
- Popup blockers, minimizing your pr0n is useless when HOT YOUNG TEEN VIRGINS banners popup afterwards!
- Back when those XXX password sites actually WORKED! (AdultChecks/AdultBouncers were easy to come by!)
- Going on IRC to find those FTP servers and/or DCC bots with 5 to 1 ratios ! 4300 cps baby!
This is just off the top of my head too...seriously.
.... Huh, Hilarious.. I think not....
"Look Smithers, Garbo is coming!"
It should be noted that these aren't actually video files, rather shockwave flash objects embedded in HTML.. not exactly something that you torrent. They're not all that large either way.
"You had this look that of an angel, it was such a bad disguise" --Dishwalla
Lets slashdot a video site.
:-D /me saw that a week or two ago when it was a hit on the blogosphere.
What could go wrong
Ok... I like the idea of some ads for Firefox, but these are definitely not extremely funny. They're cute and made me smile, but something extremely funny would probably make me laugh outloud or wet myself.
I'd like to see Firefox ads parody the dotcom Superbowl ads from a few years back. Perhaps something with that damn sock puppet or the E-Trade dancing monkey.
All that said, any publicity is good publicity, so any ad is better than no ad at all.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Looks like you don't know much about marketing. You don't want to give the viewer much clue as to what something does. If you say up front "It's a web browser", people will think "oh ok i already have one, goodbye". If you make them think "what the hell is firefox?", they will click on the link and read the sales pitch on firefox.org (and quite likely download and try it). Much more effective.
Stupid modern marketing and going for shock value instead of features. The notebook and office ones do not even show Firefox, aside from the link at the end. Oh ya, some rediculously stupid ad for it is going to intrigue me into downloading something.
Feel/Taste/See the difference? TASTE? These are some of the worst "ads" I have ever seen.
Is it just me or does the girl in the "The Mobile" video have the biggest moustache ever?
Everyone knows it'll make you go blind
(disclaimer: yes I know dyslexia is not a sight issue)
You're correct in that they're not "extremely" funny. They're more funny in a "they must have been smoking something when they came up with that" sort of way.
Actually, you're probably both right. Some users (particularly the older market) prefer the hard sell, and some prefer something more mysterious, both are effective in their respective markets.
They need a fourth one called "The Hacker" with an ending tagline of "Be The Difference" with a button for "Donate Money or Coding Skills [Here]".
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Is it just me or does the girl in the "The Mobile" video have the biggest moustache ever?
I think you need to clean your monitor.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Direct mirrors of the SWF files can be found on my blog. http://www.farhanahmed.net/blog/
I'd like to see Firefox ads parody the dotcom Superbowl ads from a few years back. Perhaps something with that damn sock puppet or the E-Trade dancing monkey.
Um, these are ads for the EU - the European Union.
Why would they want to parody some American game show? Now, if you meant some killer football (the one that David Beckham plays, not the rugby variant in the US) parody, that might be appropriate.
News flash: the world does not revolve around the US any longer, and hasn't since shortly after 2000.
It's funny for them. You're not required to understand why.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The *loader* is 60K. The actual video is larger. I wish they'd post it in a regular video format...
I can't believe you clicked it, don't you look at where links take you?
OK, it was actually not bad for any goat*.*
How many people can read hex if only you and dead people can read hex?
I found the flash files that were trying to load from the orginal here is a mirror.... http://www.exstatica.net/flash/firefox/theoffice.h tm
http://members.dslextreme.com/users/exstatica/fire fox/theoffice.htm
Enjoy.
The videos are swf (flash).
There's some things being done with video > flash.. VNC can do it now, you just watched some videos.
Adobe's stock will definately go up when they start tying Premeire into Flash or vice-versa.
Ive setup a mirror here, with the actual .swf files.
http://www.kore-net.com/funnyfox/
Personally, I just made a switch from IE to Firefox. I like FF a lot, it reminds me of Safari. I use to have a G4 and I fell in love with the Safari browser. I later sold my G4 and went a long time without a computer. I'm a PC tech, and I need to hate having PC's at home b/c all I do is work on them. Now I have a 75% built windows machine to surf the web and run Doom3. Other than that I don't use my PC.
My thoughts are though, since Billy has up'd the release of IE 7, I am sure he is going to make it a FF killer. I'm positive things like tabbed browsing and some other goodies are going to be in the new version. In addition, I wonder if Microsoft may use some of the same marketing ideas that FF is now using? MS is already showing the new Xbox 360 on MTV, could we see similar things with the new flavor of IE? Maybe they will reinvent their paradigm and try to reach users who have switched to FF and bring them back to the dark side?
Every great journey begins with the first step.
"Extremely funny". Who checks this crap?
Extremely lame. It's like they thought, "Hey, let's get CRAZY!!" then they forgot where they were going with it.
Let's get CRAZY!! WHOO! now we're all CRAZY!! Now what? Oh I know! Let's end here!
Hey! Know what'll *really* slay 'em? She takes a BITE out of her CELL PHONE, and DOESN'T EVEN REALIZE!! How CRAZY is that?! Whoo!
.nosig
Here isa mirror of the files, it on a university so you can *try* to slashdot it:
http://people.ucsc.edu/~jhagen/portable1.swf
http://people.ucsc.edu/~jhagen/bureau1.swf
http://people.ucsc.edu/~jhagen/jeune1.swf
My UID is prime and so is this number: 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0.
So Europeans really find it funny when someone accidentally chews on their cellphone, they yell as loud as possible, or their head falls off? Based on my experience watching quite a bit of British comedy, it tends to be more sophisticated than American comedy (see Shaun of the Dead compared to Viva La Bam for an example). To get to the class of comedy these ads would be in (4th grade humor), you'd have to start at British comedy and go way past American comedy until you got to the comedy that really doesn't require any wit or intelligence to come up with. You know, like groin kicks? Har har.
Besides, since when has the SuperBowl been a game show? Correct me if I'm wrong (I've only watched the last 15 of them), but I thought it was a sporting event. Not only that, but the most watched sporting event in the world each year.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
I've got a clean monitor, and she has a stache.
click me
Judging from some of the posts over at the IE Blog, IE7 won't be a firefox killer. With a project that started in January and a beta due out in a couple of months, it looks more to be a stop gap measure than a full on new release.
Basically, it'll help prevent those that haven't already switched from doing so, but I doubt it'll be strong enough to bring back those who've already left.
I wouldn't be surprised to see an IE8 in longhorn though.
You mean like this one?
When I look at this ads, this is the only thing that I can think of: they used IE and got spyware/adware installed by accident that is popping up really weird porn ads.
So Europeans really find it funny when someone accidentally chews on their cellphone, they yell as loud as possible, or their head falls off? Based on my experience watching quite a bit of British comedy, it tends to be more sophisticated than American comedy (see Shaun of the Dead compared to Viva La Bam for an example).
I see you missed half the jokes in Shaun of the Dead then. That's ok, it was funny even from an American perspective, but half of brit comedy is about the quiet desparation and all that.
Will in Seattle
This is not "Brit" humor.
click me
They are not awful they are just not suited to your tastes. Slashdot is mainly American so will be expecting them to be US centric which they are not. The humour is not American but it is still funny. They have had a good effect in their TARGET audience, is that not what matters?
Go on mod me down i have karma to burn.
If you have nothing useful to say post as AC.
Most ads these days don't even talk about the product, maybe don't even show the product. Think about a coffee commercial: In the '50s, coffee commercials talked about how their coffee was deeper, darker, and more delicious than their competition. Maybe there was a little jingle to go along with it. Now, they have some attractive couple sitting around having a sweet romantic conversation. Maybe someone in the commercial is drinking coffee, but that's about as much reference to the product as you get.
I'd guess these commercials will probably be pretty effective at generating hype, and tech products live off of hype.
I am a fan of British humour, and of some French humour as well, but it has to be something I find amusing to begin with. The only one of these I found to be amusing was the second one (the Mobile).
It's not a cutural thing (well, not a nationality based cultural thing anyway) ... these are just not that funny (well, the second one is).
.. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
You'll find the torrents and more here:
http://haikunews.org:6969
user@host$ diff
Here are the links to the videos (hosted on boxes outside of the webserver being slashdotted right now):
http://video.funnyfox.org/?product=Bureau
http://video.funnyfox.org/?product=Jeune
http://video.funnyfox.org/?product=Portable
It is still totally irelavent in most of Europe, it might mean A LOT to Americans but the Olympics surely gets more viewers or maybe the World Cup (football AKA Soccer).
Get over it, the EU has a different sense of humour to the US.
If you have nothing useful to say post as AC.
Only working link in this thread
I could be wrong. I'm always wrong...
These files are mirrored on more than just TDS. Please use the redirector links I posted below so that TDS does not get hammered. Thanks
o ld=0&commentsort=0&tid=154&tid=186&tid=1&mode=thre ad&cid=12511262
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=149252&thresh
Here's a nice computer-animated Firefox commercial made by some person(s) from SCAD.
I don't get them.
Are they excited to be using Firefox? Or should they change to Firefox to stop whatever happens to them?
Really, someone please explain them to me.
It makes just as much sense for smaller files--indeed files of any size. The download for all of the files is 3.7MB. If you had to host that and pay for it all by your lonesome when 500,000 people suddenly descend on your site, you'd be screaming! The tracker I'm connected to is indicating about 50MB/minute. That's quite alot of bandwidth if you had to pay for it. I've uploaded 45MB myself, and I'll keep it open till demand slows down.
The more you can offload your bandwidth needs onto other people, especially if you're giving the content away for free, the better. It's also better from the standpoint of the people wanting to download--you're all but guranteed to get it, whatever the size and number of people requesting it are--at the cost of a tiny bit of your upstream bandwidth.
Win win, as they say.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
People tried to sneak in advertisement to slashdot in their articles. Now they just link to the advertising itself?
It is called Viral marketing Thanks for bending over for the advertising companies.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Only a pr0n surfer would say that the letter N is a left-handed keystroke.
I actually use my keyboard as much as possible to get around Windows, so I was surprised when I learned about Win+D from your post! Thanks for the info! It doesn't help with all keyboards of course (I have several of those old IBM clicky-clicky keyboards), but it's great for the newer ones!
I don't respond to AC's.
I'm laughing because they were so bad...
What were they supposed to mean anyway?!
Tharkban (It is a signature after all)
It's like eating your favorite food everyday, eventually you'll get sick of it.
Especially if you find bugs in it.
Tag lost or not installed.
(Yes, that's a FG pun)
Anyway, the videos are funny... but they're going to confuse the normal people. Who thinks everyone knows what Firefox is? And even if they've heard of it, do they know it's free? These videos don't even explain what the people are doing on their computers. Normal people will think "what the.." and then go back to whatever they were doing.
Horrible, horrible advertising techniques!! Come on guys, stop thinking inside your own boxes!
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
I'm sure it doesn't hurt that 2 of the 3 feature hotties.
We wanted to start small as we were concerned that servers wouldn't be able to handle the load.
Well, you've come to the right place...
Given a choice between free speech and free beer, most people will take the beer.
I agree with you totally. In fact, I know what firefox does - use it every day - but I am mystified by these ads. For example, are the people in the ads screaming and having their heads blown off because they just tried firefox and think it is the coolest thing since sliced bread? Or are they using IE and so totally annoyed at it they loose all semblance of sanity? Personally, I haven't a clue.
Download my free songs!
You misread what I posted. Shaun of the Dead is insanely funny to me. It was witty and subtle, which is what British comedy tends to be. The US version of The Office is one of the few American comedies that I can say the same thing about.
You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life. --Winston Churchill
Just watched them... and they are not even remotely funny. 404 File Not Funny is right...
I pretend to know more than I really do by mooching off google and wikipedia.
These are funny?
Are you folks so insulated from reality that you found even one of these ads amusing? A guy screaming, a girl eating a phone, and a guy's head popping off. These are amusing concepts? This is what you call mirth? Do I have to be high to get it?
The adverts are horrible. They don't convey a thing about firefox, and fail at keeping someone interested. I actually got sleepy watching the ads.
It's like a dot com era ad. They don't tell you what they're doing, or why you should do it, and the ads don't make sense. GET FIREFOX - because this ad tells you to. Never mind what firefox is. The end screen could have said: "Get Firefox, the faster, smaller, free web browser."
It almost makes me want to remove firefox.
Worthless. Absolutely worthless.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
Take your pick:
:)
http://home.powertech.no/oracel/funnyfox/
http://www.sjedu.no/funnyfox/
I liked the bureau one the most, but none of them gave any really big laughs. Charming though
...and that hot jet exhaust streaming from the CRT on his desk gave him a Mentos-gasm.
Daring? European?
Pornzilla ;o)
...Rob
The American Dream isn't an SUV and a house in the suburbs; it's Don't Tread On Me.
This is great! I hated it when Fox canceled the series for no good reason. These promos should really help build an audience for the Serenity movie when it comes out in September. Ohh...wait...Firefox...nevermind...
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
This is like the fourth place I've seen this story posted with the same or similar wording, and I must ask, how many of us here are so socially inept that they find these ads 'exremely' funny. You must be he same people hat laugh whenever they see a dancing singing cat in a commercial.
Thanks, I was looking for a term for Ep 1/2!
The NYT ad was worth the money, because there was a ridiculous amount of press about this strange phenomenon where users of a browser were so moved as to donate money for its promotion. Creations like these videos may not in and of themself attract users. However, the effort people put into promoting firefox will continue to raise awareness.
I'm sorry. You don't deserve proper grammar. Now go chew on a log, fuckface.
click me
These aren't good at all. I can't tell weather the people are pissed off at Firefox or Something else.
Hell it doesn't even tell people what Firefox does.
I should hope these don't end up on TV, wow look people, use Firefox and you'll feel like crap.
In as far as promotional video goes this is awful.
I hope they didn't pay for these
Does anyone else find these commercials not funny, and even a little morbid? I just don't get the joke, and the morphing of heads and faces just creeps me out.
These were deemed too unsavory
Bedroom
Late night, guy surfing, withthe only illumination coming from the screen. Moaning noises coming from the computer (pr0n implied). Closes with 'touch the difference'
Bathroom
Woman, seated, gets this bug-eye expression while scribbling with her stylus. Ends with 'smell the difference'
People will watch these and wonder what Firefox is. A quick type on google and bammo. Ads that don't tell you exactly what a product is makes people want to find out for themselves. Shame these 'funny' commercials are nowhere near funny. They suck, sorry.
My other sig is crap too
Doesn't the "Office" video for Firefox look a bit too much like one of the original PowerMac G5 ads where the user was literally blown away.
I was trying to download some papers from a prof's website at your school at for some reason my connection kept randomly timing out...
:-)
That must be the reason why.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
getting a torrent is way too much trouble...
what about letting the browser treat it like another protocol?
torrent://1.2.3.4/video1.torrent
and the browser deals with loading the hash file and conecting to peers and all the hassle. so to me, it's just another download link...
The Super Bowl is well-known to be the highlight of television advertising, at least in the U.S.. The commercials rarely have anything to do with the sport or the event (no moreso than you'd usually see with a commercial during a football match, whatever your flavor), they just usually tend to be highly entertaining. There were some really funny dot-com ones in the past few years, some obviously done with a low (production) budget. The one he was referring to was, if I remember correctly, was just a 20 second or so clip of a monkey doing something really stupid, with a quip at the end remarking how they just spent 2+ million dollars to show a monkey doing something stupid on TV during the Super Bowl, and how you could probably put your own money to better use by visiting their site.
The difference is there was a message with the humor. Personally, I thought there was very little humor in the Firefox ads regardless, but where they truly missed was the "grab." You want the humor to be tied with your product, so that the thought of one triggers the other (i.e. thinking of the joke reminds you of the product, seeing the product makes you smile because you think of the joke). The last thing you want to do is spend money to make an extremely funny commercial about which people will struggle to remember the next day, "now what was that commercial for, again? Oh well, no matter--at least it was funny."
Disclaimer: I am a coder geek and not a marketer in any way, but that seems to just make logical sense to me.
Its unfortunate to see all the mirrors are dieing so im going to be very kind and offer my fast server as a fast mirror that will handle the load fine. the link to the home page is http://files.photojerk.com/alan/www.funnyfox.org/i ndex.html
Its taking ages to download the files from the overloaded server so the completenes of the mirror will improove slowly. Anyone can use the support form on our homepage to contact me and ill gladly mirror sites for them.
Alan
You know, I totally agree. The promised "funny"-ness of the videos also left to be desired. For example, I watched the videos while at work and I didn't laugh once. However, listening to a sound bite from Cadyshack (specifically when the groundskeeper tells Bill Murray to kill all the golfers) made me blow chunks of candy shell and chocolate along with water on my laptop screen in the middle of a serious database discussion.
Now, more to your point sir, I think these would be more informative:
Show a split screen: Internet Explorer on the Right and Firefox on the left. pan back to show the users: A grandma on the left and a geeky bill gates look-alike on the right. Put a big word on the screen (like volcano) and a countdown 3... 2... 1... GO! Then the grandma and the geek start browsing the web for volcanos using their respective browsers. Show how easily Control Click and tab navigation coupled with the smooth popup blocker and the search engine at the top right lead to results. Also show how the internet explorer user is stuck in a sea of popups and gets malware installed on his computer so it runs slower and has to go to the task bar to navigate through all the pages he's opened and keeps having to install search bar helpers or go to different websites to search for everything. Grandma wins, and a firefox pounces in between them and puts her hand up boxing style. Now that's entertainment.
I see that these ads are perfect for putting on the side of Yahoo Launch Radio windows. Or any free internet radio services. Short 30 second clips and at the end is a link to Firefox. I'd imagine that they'd sway in quite a bit amount of users.
- Teja
Please let the strain off of the site and use the many mirrors posted here. Alan
The difference is there was a message with the humor. Personally, I thought there was very little humor in the Firefox ads regardless, but where they truly missed was the "grab." You want the humor to be tied with your product, so that the thought of one triggers the other (i.e. thinking of the joke reminds you of the product, seeing the product makes you smile because you think of the joke). The last thing you want to do is spend money to make an extremely funny commercial about which people will struggle to remember the next day, "now what was that commercial for, again? Oh well, no matter--at least it was funny."
Disclaimer: I am a coder geek and not a marketer in any way, but that seems to just make logical sense to me.
Ah, but while I may be a coder geek, my first degree was in Business Management for Sales and Marketing. And I did win an award back in the late 1980s for a humorous play written in French and English in Canada. So I do think it's funny and I don't expect you to get it.
It's a free series of ads. From that bar it's very good. If we had 2+ million dollars (or even better Euros) to waste on an ad as you mentioned, I would have different expectations. But we don't. Because they aren't spending that kind of cash.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The ads are somewhat amusing, but I find them disturbing. Don't get me wrong I'm all about being disturbed: but by my browser? Why.
In the future I hope they learn how to spoof existing campaigns (Apple/Dell) and leave the disturbing part to the individuals choice of website.
Quack, quack.
These guys clearly either haven't really done much work in advertising... or else they have, and failed miserably.
What must be the number one problem with a lot of advertisements over the past couple of years, especially for new products, is that the advertisers spend too much time being weird, funky, shocking, and funny, and COMPLETELY FORGET ABOUT THE FRICKIN' PRODUCT.
At any given moment I can rattle off a commercial I've seen whose content really stuck with me, but I couldn't for the life of me tell you what the hell they were advertising.
Like that Dodge Ram commercial where the middle aged guy is making the two salespeople turn the truck back and forth.
Wait a minute, that's not a Dodge Ram commercial at all, it's a Vehix commercial. Well, at least we were close with this one, it's car related somehow.
Or what about those commercials about the company with the tech support department that is so good it can tell you if something is funny? Wait, that's for TBS. Who doesn't actually provide that service at all.
And these ones are for that website thats so crazy and shocking that it makes your head explode. Right?
These ads don't say anything - I mean, nothing at all - about what's good about Firefox. All they say is that it'll make you scream, or decapitate you. A little balance with some message of benefit might help.
Terrorists can attack freedom, but only Congress can destroy it.
First off, I am a Firefox user and enjoy it despite the inconvenience of working in an IE/MS environment...so save the flames for your steak tonight. With that said, what exactly was the point of those ads? They said exactly nothing about the product or the benefits it would give the user...the people featured could have just seen anything from a BSOD to naked pictures of Jar-Jar Binks. Remember, to most of the world Firefox is a book by Craig Thomas (or a Clint Eastwood movie, if you prefer). How about at least mentioning the words "web browser" in the ad?
By all means, get the word out about Firefox and convert the masses before their collective heads pop off...but do it by telling people what you're offering and how it will benefit their lives, not by showing a cute dot-com type commercial that only works if you're *already* a known brand.
Study everything, you'll find something you can use - Jason Bourne
This clearly shows Funnyfox success:? q=&url=funnyfox.org/
? &range=6m&size=medium&y=r&url=funnyfox.org/#top
? &range=6m&size=medium&y=r&url=mozilla.org#top
? &range=6m&size=medium&y=r&url=microsoft.com#top
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details
But that's still nothing compared to Mozilla.org:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details
And yet, Mozilla.org is notihing compared to Microsoft.com:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details
But, of course, Google.com tops them all:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details
Simpy
Show the guy in the office again but this time show him surfing using IE. Then show him hitting a malware page that replicates a virus to his computer , the virus while running also plays an audio clip "You have been infected by GayPornLover.exe, Internet Explorer victims are so easy!" Now have him screaming over that while in the background you see all of the other networked computers in his entire building catch the same virus from him as the building begins to crack and crumble to the ground. Have him still screaming while the entire building breaks up and falls to the ground, him included. Flash forward to the guy in a full body cast in the hospital, 1 leg up, where he says: "My company would still exist today if I had only used Firefox." The existing ads are crap BTW, not funny, not even interesting. They are just dumb.
LeoPolus Web Design: http://www.leopolus.com
I don't even have shockwave installed, you insensitive clod!
Here's my contribution to the anti-microsoft rebellion. It is in the form of a 30 second ad:
INT - MARY'S HOME OFFICE.
[Mary is seen banging her hand down on her desk]
MARY:
Damn!
[John comes into the picture]
JOHN:
Hey Mary, what's wrong?
[In a frustrated voice]
MARY:
My computer is as slow as molasses...
and all those pop-ups...
I can't get any work done.
JOHN:
That's because you're using Windows XP and Internet Explorer.
[Mary turns to John and looks into his eyes.]
MARY:
Go on.
JOHN:
I use Linux and I'm never going back. No more blue-screens-of-death, pop-ups, no spam, no worms and no spy-ware.
MARY:
But I'm not a geek.
JOHN:
Linux isn't just for geeks anymore and it's free. You can share it with your friends, too.
MARY:
Sounds great. How do I get copy?
JOHN:
I'll bring the disks and install it for you on Saturday.
[Mary is now elated]
MARY:
Sounds like a plan. Can I go down on you?
JOHN:
Sure!
[Fade to black]
VOICE OVER:
Linux...Look for the Penguin.
SFX: Zipper opening
MARY:
Oh John, I never knew.
[SFX: Slurping sounds.]
Yes, that and they really weren't funny. I am sorry if I am being snobby, but I thought they were predictable and the jokes rather tired (uh oh, is she going to eat something besides the candy bar?)
So yeah, not funny and not descriptive of the product. That should appeal to the demographic "people who are not already using Firefox." Overall well done I say.
You might be interested in this spot. Made by a student no less.. htm
http://studentpages.scad.edu/~eedwar21/firefoxweb
I agree. These spots were worth a smirk. But then, so much web multimedia humor that gets spread around is in that category. I can't say that GoDaddy's ad was any better.
I did not find any of these commercials to be "extremely funny"...
thank you!
But these are incredibly stupid. I sincerly doubt people will go use Firefox because they are going to have a better orgasm when they see the computer screen, or whatever these commercials are supposed to show.
don't make me fist you with a rule of pennies for your impudance. NYAR!
click me
Have you ever seen a Mentos commercial? That's what people are used to and expect in Europe. If you tried to show some Friends-wannabe or Dodge-Ram-Tough-type Firefox commercial there they'd be regarding you with the same puzzlement and derision.
Plus, I think most are missing out on the stated "viral" nature of these adverts. Yes, they left out lots of product information; that's what qualifies as a "viral" ad campaign. It is solely about building buzz, interest and name recognition--not listing off product features and advantages.
I thought the guy in the office was an IE user and he had just gone to a porn site and gotten 1 million popups and that's why his head asploded.
Sure it does, if one user alone couldn't handle the demand. A POTS modem user could, for instance, with the help of BT, disseminate a 100KB file to thousands more people (even to other regular modem users) than his little pipe could do alone. Even for high demand files as small as 1MB BT makes lots of sense.
The protocol is what? 20% of the size of the payload (probably mostly checksums for chunks)? I really don't know, but that's my guess. More than that would not make sense. It could potentially be useful for pretty small files--admittedly for lower and lower values of usefulness.
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
You said the link was to some 'incredibly funny' videos. The link took me instead to some not-so-funny ones. Could you post the correct link, please?
http://xkcd.com/386/
No full-screen mode, either.
Very annoying on high-res displays.
Why bother using a less than worthy web browser called Firefox, when you could use the excellent new browser called Opera 8. FireFox doesn't even compare!!!
"it's something to do with computers"
Or, more correctly, "it's something to do with computers that will either a) make you scream until your office explodes, b) make you eat your cellphone, or c) make your head pop off"
I'm not sure entirely what it was about firefox that was this amazing. It's still the same internet as you'd see in any other browser.
They made no sense at all... I did get a laugh out of having a guy SCREAM while I had the volume up at work, though. I figured you'd have to click a link to start the videos so I just opened the site up in a new tab and kept browsing /.
Did the submitter link the wrong website?
"The newly born animals are then whisked off for a quick run through a giant baking oven." --heard on Food Network
1) Not that funny. at all. seriously. not. not even slightly.
2) If anyone gets that excited over a freakin browser, especially one that allows web sites to WRITE files it the drive and execute them, they need to be pushed down a splintered flight of stairs - twice.
3) I use Firefox (love the web developer plugin!) and while I really dig it, it's simply a way for me to view the web. It's not curing cancer for fuck's sake.
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
Obviously microsoft or some clever enemy of firefox made these advertisements with the knowledge that it would turn us against the browser. An insider, a traitor amongst them!
"Never let your sense of morals prevent you from doing what's right." -Isaac Asimov
I'm sorry, but those promo vids were hardly "extremely funny". The Firefox fanboyism here is incredible.
Don't worry if you don't get it.
This type of commercial is fairly normal in the UK, Benelux and Scandinavia. It tries to inherit both from those who are pointed into something you don't expect seeing (usually Monty-Python-like funny, using modern sfx) and those that have an elite stance that only a certain group can understand or that lives of people not understanding what it's about right away.
The thing that is strange about it is that it combines a strong humorous concept with a rather 'serious' concept.
Anyway, whatever you think, these commercials are made by professionals and are quite good actually. They're just so absolutely unsuited for the american market and watching habbits. That's all.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
it's meant to be roll of pennies. And I meant fisting in the sense of me shoving my fist into an orafice. The roll of pennies would be kept in my fist. Thusly, it's more painful.
click me
That's like saying that it dosen't make sense to drive cars when busses are more efficient.
case in point:
a)busses don't arrive when you want them to.
b)busses don't always go where you want to go.
If bittorrent is a 4x4 and it gets you to the mountians but sucks down more gas in the process, it still does it's purpose. If your purpose is to distribute a small file from a slow connection, with an outside higher bandwidth tracker, IT WILL WORK. Heck, once it's seeded the rest of the peers will probably take over for a good long time, and it didn't use your bandwidth except for a minute or two.
It's like having a team of someone eles's horses pull your jeep uphill when you run out of gas! How can you argue against that? Humans do plenty of things that don't make sense (energy wise and monetarily, amongst others), but we still do it, and here we are! Jeepers!
Maybe it would be more efficient if we all up and died! It'd probably make more sense too, for those chalenged of sensibility!
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.